


Taeyong and the In-eo

by JungMichan



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop, NCT (Band), SHINee, SuperM (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Boats and Ships, Established Relationship, Fishing, Gen, M/M, Magical Realism, Mythology - Freeform, References to Depression, Sharks, Unreliable Narrator, adult fairytale, not your usual mermaid fic, unsettling themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:29:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29556366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JungMichan/pseuds/JungMichan
Summary: Taeyong encounters a merperson on a fishing trip, and becomes enthralled.
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Lee Taeyong, Lee Taeyong/Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	Taeyong and the In-eo

In Busan, South Korea, lives a young fisherman called Lee Taeyong. He’s the latest in a long line of fisherman, twenty-five years old, pale-skinned and sharp-jawed and wiry, just as his father had been. He has a beautiful boyfriend, Baekhyun, a nurse a couple of years older than him, who he’d met at Busan General Hospital when a cut on his arm had gotten infected. Sometimes when they lie in bed at night Baekhyun likes to run his slender fingers along the scar that cut had made. They had moved in together a year ago. They’re soulmates, Baekhyun likes to say, with a little laugh like the sun playing over the wind-ruffled ocean. 

Taeyong is a shy and sensitive soul, and he adores Baekhyun as only such a person could, with a love built on a list of reasons and proof of Baekhyun’s goodness. Baekhyun is a charming man, bright and intelligent, with gorgeous, silky hair he dyes a pale blonde and keeps cut just below his ears. For work he wears sneakers and scrubs, but at home he favours loose, fine-knit sweaters that hang from his shoulders and show his collarbones, and delicate earrings that shimmer against his neck like the glittering scales of silver fish flashing through clear water.

Now Baekhyun is standing at the end of the Busan dock, waving at Taeyong as his ship heads out to sea. Taeyong waves back, as he always does, until Baekhyun’s lonely figure is too distant to make out any longer among the blurred bulky shapes of the fishing boats.

He’s on board the _Odd Eye_ , a fishing ship headed out in the East China Sea. The captain is a lean, lithe man called Taemin, who inherited the _Odd Eye_ from his own father. Taeyong has worked for Taemin before and likes him. The trip will last five weeks, if it takes that long to fill the hold, and it probably will. Over the past decade fishing along the Korean coast has dwindled - the result of overfishing in previous decades - so that every season the captains have to push their crews out farther to make a profit. Taeyong has spent most of the last year working odd jobs in the city, though Baekhyun offers to share the income he makes from nursing, but lately he has been going to sea again.

He knows most of the crew on the trip. Most of them are older than him, and like Taeyong have been fishing since their teens. The only person he does not know is Mark Lee, a Canadian-born ethnic Korean new to the country, and from the look of him, new to fishing as well. Mark is small and slightly-built, with brown eyes that seem too large for his face, like child’s. He’s twenty years old and acts even younger. As the ship moves out into the bay, leaving Busan, Mark leans against the rail and stares down into the water, then turns and grins at the other men on deck as though the mere sight of the ocean is something astounding.

The first night at sea is clear and warm. The men sit on deck, talking, some smoking. Mark points out the constellations, not just Orion and the Big Dipper and the ones they all know, but others as well, the strange Greek names sliding more easily off his tongue than his accented Korean does at times. When he finally stops talking there’s an awkward silence until the captain tells a joke, and Kim Jongin - a senior of Taeyong’s from high school and Taemin’s best friend as well as the first mate - starts laughing his high, giggling laugh that makes him sound like a teenage girl. The other men begin laughing and telling jokes as well. Taeyong smiles and nods along, but he’s watching Mark, who is sitting across from him on the other side of the circle of men. There’s a thin line on a fishing ship between men who are useless and those whose incompetence endangers their shipmates; it’s still unclear where Mark will fall.

Their target fishing ground is five days north-east, a swath of oceans around the 44th parallel, just outside the bounds of North Korean ocean. As they travel they work, rechecking the nets, making sure that the ice machine in the hold is in working order to preserve the fish they will catch. On the fifth day, an hour before sunset, the captain looks up from the sonar and says there are fish around. He sends Taeyong and Mark to pay out the nets, and the motors of the net drums growl as they slowly unwind forty kilometres’ worth of woven monofilament line that will float through the water like a spider’s web, reaching hungrily for the passing fish. They will let it drift with the tides and haul it in the following morning, to see what their fortune will be for this trip.

By the time they finish with the nets, the rest of the men are asleep. Taeyong finds his way through the dim bunkroom, and hears Mark stumble in behind him. They both get into their bunks, but as soon as Taeyong lies down he can tell this is one of those nights when he’ll struggle with the insomnia that sometimes comes over him, for no real reason that he can identify. He stays lying in bed for an hour or so anyway, listening to the breathing of the others as they sink into heavy sleep. Then he puts on his boots and jacket and goes up on deck.

The moon has come out, and the waves are black, edged with foam and shivering streaks of light. Taeyong leans against the rail, eyes drifting aimlessly over the waves, getting lost in their pattern. Then he sees the _in-eo_.

At first he thinks it is a large fish breaching the surface. He sees only the tail as it slides beneath the waves, silver and glittering in the faint light from the moon. But even the sight of the tail tugs at his nerves. It surfaces again, and the nervousness hardens into a knot. Its skin is pearly white, and gives off the kind of glow he’s seen in certain jellyfish. It’s perhaps twenty metres from the ship, and it floats at the surface of the water with its tail submerged, facing away from him. A line of silver scales marks its spine and disappears into its hair. It slips in and out of the water, tail propelling it quickly, gracefully, its movement delicate. It seems to be looking for something, turning its head from side to side, and every time it turns, Taeyong hopes to catch a glimpse of its face, but he never sees more than a thin crescent of its profile. As he watches, an ache fills his bones. The light from the _in-eo’s_ skin makes everything around it dull. The moon-capped waves, the stars, even the black water loses its gloss. Eventually, the _in-eo_ dives beneath the waves and does not reappear. Taeyong watches for it until the sun comes up, and when the other men shuffle onto deck, yawning, he joins them.

They pull in the nets. Taeyong scans the deck anxiously, afraid that he’ll see a pair of white arms among the lines, but he sees only fish. It’s a fair catch, nothing to brag about, but enough to put a little money into each of their pockets. Taeyong loads fish into the hold. He’s not superstitious. His eyes and ears do not play tricks on him. He trusts himself completely. So the _in-eo_ must be real. He wonders where it had gone when it disappeared.

~~~~~

Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul was born at the bottom of the ocean, a place beyond the reach of sunlight, warmed only by the muttering of geothermal vents. He had wandered up out of those depths and spent his early years on the slopes of an underwater mountain in the Gulf of Thailand. Of his birthplace he retains only a vague impression of magnificent creatures with skin like a carpet of teeth, of tentacles that snapped and plucked blindfish from the water, and currents that burst from the lips of the vents like magma, warmth from the very core of the earth. Among these hazy memories there is no image of another creature like him, but he was born with a genetic knowledge of all things he needed to know, and among that knowledge was his name.

One day Chittaphon follows a swordfish out of the gulf and east and north. The water, as he travels, turns from sapphire blue to a murky grey-green, and the fish get larger but lose their bright colours. He doesn’t find the northern seas as appealing as those he’s used to, but he’s a creature of endless curiosity. Still, he might have turned around and gone back to warmer waters if it hadn’t been for the tiger shark he comes across in the waters somewhere east of Hong Kong and follows north up the coast of China.

The tiger shark is hard to see. His mottled sides blend so completely with the sea that he could have been a shadow, a swell of agitated water, a cloud of sand sent up by a manta ray. Chittaphon observes him from a distance, watching for the white flash of his belly whenever he twists to change direction.

Chittaphon decides it is best to approach the shark when he has just eaten. Not that he ever makes any move to attack Chittaphon - he prefers to surprise his prey, and Chittaphon is always watchful. But he’s calmer after eating. When he’s hungry, the shark dives deep into the water until he is invisible from above. As he waits for the shark to resurface, Chittaphon feels a strange electric trill at the back of his neck. He becomes suddenly aware of the water against his skin, something he seldom otherwise notices. The shark circles slowly until he spots his prey, and then he shoots upward, mouth open, bursting above the surface of the ocean with his attack. After he finishes eating, he swims in lazy circles while blood still clouds the water.

Chittaphon begins to search for fish, finding the biggest ones in the surrounding ocean, corralling them towards him. He experiments first with a 40-centimetre plaice, slashing a piece of sharpened shell against its flat-edged side. The fish jerks away from him with a powerful flip of its tail, but a stream of blood trails behind it. Chittaphon keeps the plaice in sight, and waits.

The tiger shark can smell blood miles away, can feel the telltale vibrations in the water that a wounded fish makes. He charges up from below in an explosion of turbulence, bites the plaice in half and swallows it in two bites. When he has finished, Chittaphon swims cautiously towards him. His flat, black eyes follow Chittaphon, but he does not seem disturbed, so Chittaphon edges closer and presses his hands against the shark’s mottled side. The skin is rough, covered with serrations too small to see. Touching that skin thrills Chittaphon. The shark is a solid whip of muscle, carelessly lethal, and his presence transforms the drab green of the East China Sea into a place full of wonder and fascination. 

The shark dives deeper, the water changing from green to grey to black, and eventually Chittaphon leaves and spirals away on his own.

He swims to a spot he especially likes, a large chunk of volcanic rock that rests on the seafloor, worn smooth by years of tides and sand. Chittaphon sinks down into a hollow of it and begins to sing. His voice has a deep, liquid sound like a separate current within the water. The shark can hear it, but it means nothing to him, and so he pays it no attention. The fish hear it, too, though, and are entranced by it. The song is the sound of joy without depth, of clear waters and warm blood and the sunlight that pierces the tops of the waves. Fish are drawn from miles away. They orbit Chittaphon in a slow swirl of fins and scales, and Chittaphon can only think that the shark will be well-fed, that he can be close to him more often.

~~~~~

When Taeyong arrives back at port, thirty-one days after setting out, Baekhyun is standing at the end of the dock waiting for him, as though he hasn’t moved during that entire month. In the parking lot, out of sight of the boat, he hugs Taeyong tightly. Taeyong kisses his head and tries to find the scent of his hair beneath the smell of disinfectant and the sickly sweet air freshener they use at the hospital.

“Was it a good trip?” Baekhyun asks, as they get into the car.

Taeyong thinks about the _in-eo_ , and knows he cannot tell Baekhyun about it.

“Not a bad catch. Nothing spectacular, though. It won’t be much money.”

“Did you miss me?”

“Of course,” Taeyong says.

~~~~~

Usually Taeyong enjoys being back on land after a long trip, but now he feels restless. Sometimes he finds himself drifting away in the middle of one of Baekhyun’s stories about the hospital, unable to focus on his voice. He begins looking for projects to keep himself busy, cleaning out all the cupboards and their storage lockup in the basement, buying paint and repainting all the window frames and skirting boards. 

He begins spending more time at the local fisherman’s bar, especially when Baekhyun is on night shifts at the hospital. It’s a place he usually avoids, telling Baekhyun he gets more than enough of his friends during their time at sea. Now he goes more often, and the talk is always about the same thing. No one is catching. Fishermen on land-leave drink all night, run up tabs they can’t pay, and fights are frequent. Some of these men have been to sea on and off for a year without ever being home for more than a few weeks at a time, trying to find the catch that will give them money for their car payments, their mortgages, for their children’s school tuition and _hagwon_ fees. Taeyong realizes that the crew of the _Odd Eye_ hadn’t fared too badly with their mediocre catch, after all; most trips aren’t even making back their expenses.

Sometimes he sees Mark Lee at the bar, sitting alone in a corner booth. One night, against his better judgement, Taeyong joins him. Mark is reading a book in English, which he politely puts down when Taeyong approaches. They make small talk for a few minutes, until Mark says, “So, are you going on Taemin’s next trip?”

“Are you?” asks Taeyong, surprised. They’d hit a string of small storms on the way back to Busan, and Mark had spent most of the return trip throwing up over the side of the boat.

Mark nods. “Taemin said he’d take me on as an apprentice if I was willing to work without pay for a few trips. I’ve always loved the sea.”

Taeyong looks down to avoid frowning directly at Mark. Taking on a kid with no experience, whether he’s free labour or not, is irresponsible. Mark has a romantic’s vision of the sea, which is nothing like the understanding of those who earn their living by it. During the last trip he had made most of the crew uncomfortable with his strange questions: What is the best time of year to watch the sunset? What do native legends say about this part of the sea? Are there any endangered species in the area? The crew do not know the answers to such questions, though they have been fishing the East China Sea since they were teenagers. These things do not matter to them. 

~~~~~

The next afternoon, when Taeyong comes back from aimlessly wandering the docks, Baekhyun tells him that Taemin called, that he’s planning to head out again in two weeks, and that he had asked if Taeyong will ship out with him. Taeyong nods, and tries to hide the shiver that slides all the way down from the crown of his head to his feet. Baekhyun, still wearing his blue nursing scrubs, sits down beside him on the couch.

“Taeyong, you just got back,” he says.

“I’ll be back again soon. Maybe with some real money this time.”

“I could work a couple of extra shifts, help out with the rent. I don’t mind, honest.”

Taeyong leans against Baekhyun’s side, closes his eyes as Baekhyun strokes his hair. He wants to see the _in-eo_ again and he doesn’t. But he doesn’t want Baekhyun working extra shifts because Taeyong can’t make ends meet. He doesn’t want that between them.

“It won’t be too long,” he says.

~~~~~

There are high winds the day the _Odd Eye_ leaves Busan, but when it reaches the spot that provided its meager bounty last time, the ocean is calm.

For a week, Taeyong spends his evenings watching for the _in-eo_ while the other men drink and play cards, but he doesn’t see it. Finally, one night when everyone else is asleep, he steals up onto deck and unlashes the lifeboat that is tied to the edge of the ship. Climbing inside, he lowers it into the water with the ropes and pulleys. He takes the oars from the side of the lifeboat and begins to row until he’s about 150 metres from the ship. With every pull of the oars, he feels increasingly uneasy. The waves are larger than they looked from the deck of the _Odd Eye,_ and the sound and smell of them is inescapable. For all his years at sea, he’s spent little time this close to the water, and there’s good reason for that. The ocean here is 2 kilometres deep or more; if they were to move a few kilometres farther south they would be over the edge of the continental shelf, and the water would reach down forever into bottomless trenches of blackness. He tries to put those depths out of his mind as he brings the oars in and looks over the edge of the boat. He thinks about calling out, but realises it would be useless. If the _in-eo_ is on the surface and near enough to hear him, he would see it - with that luminous skin - and if it isn’t, it won’t be able to hear him through the waves. Taeyong drags his fingers slowly through the water, imagining for a moment that he can feel the plankton in it, all the thousands of invisible creatures that float on the surface of the sea. Then he sees a faint white glow beneath the waves several feet away, coming closer, and he pulls his hand back quickly as though it has been burned, holding it against his chest.

The _in-eo_ rises to the surface and hooks its long, pale fingers over the edge of the boat. Now that it’s close enough to touch, Taeyong can see that it is male, its thin chest smooth and flat. And it - he - is beautiful. He has wide-set, almond-shaped eyes, perfectly arched eyebrows, and a fine, flat-cheekboned face. His hair reaches his shoulders, and Taeyong would have said it was tangled, except it doesn’t look like it should be otherwise; he feels that combing it out would be trying to comb a person’s limbs. Each ebony strand is thick enough to see individually, and has the moist, plush look of a sea anemone. His veins are visible beneath his skin. His lips form a perfect cupid’s bow. His nose is thin, and Taeyong can’t see, through the thick locks of hair, whether he has ears. His fingers are webbed with translucent skin that looks delicate but must be incredibly strong.

Taeyong reaches out slowly and touches the _in-eo’s_ arm. The _in-eo_ flinches but does not move away. His skin is cool and moist. Taeyong feels as though the tips of his fingers where he touches him are dissolving. 

He strips off his clothes and lowers himself into the water. The chill cuts through his skin instantly. He hasn’t actually been in the ocean in years, although he’s used to being drenched in spray or rain while he’s on the ship. He’s a strong swimmer, but the cold is debilitating. Forcing himself to let go of the edge of the lifeboat, he reaches for the _in-eo._ The creature stays afloat easily, flicking his tail back and forth beneath the surface of the ocean, and does not move away when he places his hands on his shoulders. Taeyong runs his fingertips tentatively over the _in-eo’s_ collarbones, his face, through his hair, and below the water the _in-eo_ ’s tail fins stroke his legs, caressing his feet and toes as nimbly as fingers would, and sending a crackle like static shock through his skin. 

“Who are you?” Taeyong whispers. The _in-eo_ has a mouth like Taeyong’s, and a throat with a visible Adam’s apple. At a glance, at least, the right anatomy for vocalisation, for speech. “Can you talk? Do you have a name?”

The _in-eo_ gazes at him curiously, obviously not understanding a word, so Taeyong uses a rudimentary universal sign language, gesturing to his chest and repeating his own name, then pressing his hand to the _in-eo’s._

It takes a few tries, but eventually the in-eo’s mouth opens. It lets out a rapid, screeching, nasally burst of syllables that Taeyong knows at once he has no hope of reproducing accurately, but he does his best, and ends up with a word that sounds an approximation of the first part of what he hopes is the _in-eo’s_ name: _Chittaphon_.

The feeling Chittaphon inspires in Taeyong is not lust, or love, or even curiosity; it is a feeling he does not recall having before, a sense of wonder that travels with his blood and invades every part of his body. While he is touching Chittaphon, the rest of the world fades from his notice, and it is only when Chittaphon ducks beneath the water that Taeyong sees that the lifeboat has drifted over fifty metres away. If his muscles cramp, which seems increasingly likely in the icy water, he’ll never make it back. He can see Chittaphon glowing below him in the water, and he dives for him, but the dark water makes his depth deceptive and Taeyong cannot get anywhere near. When he surfaces, he turns reluctantly away and swims to the lifeboat.

As he pulls himself over the side, his leg muscles begin to spasm, and he falls into the bottom of the boat with a shuddering gasp. He grabs his t-shirt and uses it to dry himself as best he can, then struggles into his sweater. He pulls on his pants and rows back to the _Odd Eye,_ pulling hard, his arm muscles threatening to seize up. By the time he manages to climb on board and haul the lifeboat up, he’s shivering uncontrollably, and the sky is beginning to lighten.

~~~~~

When everyone has had breakfast and assembled on deck with the hooks they use to move the fish, Jongin begins to draw in the catch. The net rises, metre by metre, and Taeyong watches as Jongin closes his eyes and listens to the sound of the motors. A moment later, the first fish come into view.

There are more fish than Taeyong has seen in years. The net is heavy with them, the monofilament lines straining to hold them. The crew all stand blinking for a moment, then grin at each other. Jongin whoops and moves swiftly to the controls that will bring the fish on board.

The crew spend the rest of the day putting fish into the hold and cleaning the deck. In addition to tuna, they have caught a few croakers, some saury and plaice. Those that are still alive thrash around the deck, trying to make their way back into the water, their slick scales turning dull in the sun. There is a dolphin too, and Mark is distraught when he sees it, dropping his hook, running over to it and throwing his arms around the animal as though it were his sister.

“Look at it,” Mark says, tears in his eyes. “It’s practically human. Look at its _eyes._ ” He struggles with the dolphin until Taeyong leaves his sorting and comes to help him, and together they heave the animal back over the rail into the water. Mark stands and watches it swim away with a look somewhere between awe and grief.

That night at dinner, Taeyong sits among the crew, trying to match their good mood, but he can feel the emptiness of his smile. He’s light-headed with exhaustion, and yet, when the other men finally finish drinking and go to bed, he finds that, again, he cannot sleep. The world shifts around him in patches of grey fluorescence, every sound in the bunkroom is magnified, and a dull buzz starts to build in the back of his skull. Eventually he goes to the deck. He watches until sunrise, but does not see the _in-eo._

~~~~~

Chittaphon is ecstatic. His tiger shark has more food than he needs, and after every feeding Chittaphon circles around him and sings. As weeks pass, his melody gains a deeper resonance, reverberates along the great ridge that marks the Pacific Rim and spreads further. He calls fish from the deep sea, swordfish and bass, whole schools of mackerel. And others, fish that have never before ventured north: angelfish, clownfish, spotted eels. A school of blue-and-yellow parrot fish follow the sound of his voice all the way from the balmy waters off Vanuatu up towards the East China Sea, their body temperatures plummeting as they go, until they die suddenly, as a group, and rise to the surface of the ocean in a multi-coloured cloud. The fish that follow Chittaphon's song ignore migratory patterns, potential prey, and the baited lines of the trawling boats; they think of nothing but moving north towards him.

~~~~~

On the _Odd Eye_ the catches are good every day, so good the fishermen begin to feel uncomfortable about it. This kind of abundance hasn’t been seen since most of their parents were children, if ever. One day, Taeyong walks to the bow and finds Taemin staring down into the water.

“I can see them,” Taemin says. He sounds unnerved. “I swear I can.”

Taeyong looks, and, through the glow of the sun on the waves, he thinks he, too, sees shifting layers of movement just below the surface, as though the ocean is so full of fish it is preparing to overflow.

It takes them two weeks to fill the hold, and in that time Taeyong sleeps no more than a couple of hours each night. For the most part, everyone is too busy hauling fish and getting drunk to notice, but Taeyong thinks Mark looks at him strangely sometimes as they pass in the hall between the galley and bunks. 

Taeyong swims with Chittaphon every night. He has found an old wetsuit in the storage room, and now he lowers himself with a rope that he drops from the prow of the ship, straight into the water. The wetsuit gives him an extra layer of protection, but his feet and hands and head are still exposed, and going into the ocean inevitably leaves him drained, weak, shivering. Still, he wants to be as close to Chittaphon as he can. The chill of the water fades into obscurity when Chittaphon’s moist, searching fingers are trailing along Taeyong’s calves. He is fascinated by Taeyong’s legs, spends long minutes wrapping his arms around them, every touch sending painful pulses of electricity through Taeyong’s body. He thinks Chittaphon must have some kind of electrical charge, in the way electric eels do. He stays beside Chittaphon until he can feel hypothermia setting in and, against the relentless pull of his entrancement, forces himself to leave the water.

Taeyong does not exactly enjoy being with Chittaphon. It’s just that Chittaphon is the only thing around him that seems to be real. The phosphorescence of his skin, the silver reflections of his tail, are more tangible to Taeyong than the ocean or the ship or the taste of food. The sparks of energy that go through his hands or face when Chittaphon touches him are the only sensations that fully pierce the veil of exhaustion that has settled over the rest of his life. He gets so little sleep, he sometimes thinks it will kill him.

When the hold is full, they go home. They’re days ahead of schedule, but Baekhyun somehow hears and is there waiting for him at the dock, hands shoved deep into the front pouch of his hoodie as he hunches his shoulders against the cold wind. When they’re in the car park and out of sight of the boat he takes Taeyong’s face in his hands, forehead creasing as he searches Taeyong’s face.

“You look ill,” he says. “Are you alright?”

Taeyong leans against the car, looking back towards the docks, although he can’t see the ocean from here, listening for the sound of the water.

“Taeyong?” Baekhyun asks.

“Yes?”

“I’m glad you’re back.”

Taeyong nods, and lets Baekhyun hug him again, closing his eyes until Baekhyun pulls away, opens the door so Taeyong can get in the car and Baekhyun can take him home.

That night the crew of the _Odd Eye,_ all of them but Taeyong, make their way to the bar to celebrate their success. They’re bursting with money and good cheer when they enter, but their exuberance quickly fades under the jealous stares of the other fishermen. While the _Odd Eye_ has been hauling in millions of won a day, no one else’s luck has changed. The faces around the bar are still grim. The crew of the _Odd Eye_ gather at a corner table and quietly toast their luck until they’ve drunk enough _somaek_ that they forget to be quiet. Then they start singing, endless choruses of misremembered lyrics. When Taemin hears about it the next day, he calls every one of them and tells them that if they want to have a good haul and another payout in a few weeks, they had better stay quiet and not flash their money around.

Taeyong finds himself finally able to sleep. Over the course of the next week he sleeps sixteen, eighteen hours a day. He dreams of monsters from the deep, jagged teeth and wide-open jaws, suction cups as big as tires adhering to his chest and back. He moves through ranges of underwater mountains covered in waving seaweed, a place both terrifying and alluring, while the shadows of massive fish pass over him.

When he’s awake, the world is drab. The buzz of insomnia in the back of his head fades, but Baekhyun’s voice takes its place, so that he always seems to be speaking to him from very far away. He finds that if he concentrates, everything Baekhyun says makes sense, that his voice is the same pleasant, soothing, mellowness of tone he has always had. But it is an effort to hear his individual words and turn them into meaning, and all he can think about is the sea.

Baekhyun does his best to reach him. He begins planning activities for them on his days off, to the movies, to new restaurants they have to drive three towns over to get to. He invites friends Taeyong hasn’t seen in years over for dinner, and the house fills with the scents of sauteed onions or chopped herbs until Taeyong feels like he’s suffocating.

One morning Taeyong wakes to find Baekhyun shaking him gently as pale sunlight pours over his shoulders and turns his blonde hair into a glowing aureole. Baekhyun puts the back of his hand to Taeyong’s forehead, brushes his hair back tenderly. Taeyong makes a great effort to concentrate, and sees the worry in Baekhyun’s beautiful face.

“Get up, love,” Baekhyun says. “We’re going shopping.”

“Go without me,” Taeyong whispers.

“I need your opinion, though.”

Taeyong’s eyelids are so heavy. “We don’t need anything, do we?”

“That’s not the point,” Baekhyun says. “You’re sleeping too much, not eating enough. I barely see you anymore. Spend time with me.”

Taeyong gets dressed, drinks a glass of water for breakfast, and slumps against the window in the car as Baekhyun drives. He wants nothing more than to go back to sleep, but he senses a tension in Baekhyun’s actions, in the way he wraps his fingers around the steering wheel and holds his head. He radiates anxiety, and Taeyong doesn’t like that; he doesn’t want Baekhyun to worry.

When they reach the mall, Baekhyun walks up and down between the rows of shops, pointing excitedly at the different displays. He pulls Taeyong into a fashionable men’s clothing store full of expensive suits and shirts and a whole wall full of polished dress shoes. They’re not the kind of clothes Baekhyun likes at all, and Taeyong wonders why he’s even looking at them. He leads Taeyong through a department store, examining pots and pans, rubbing towels against his face to check their softness. Eventually he finds the sporting section and picks up a cheap rod-and-reel set.

“We could go fishing together,” he says. “We could go to a lake or a dam or something.”

“Lake fishing is just waiting with a pole in your hand,” Taeyong says wearily. 

“Well, I’ve gotten pretty good at waiting,” says Baekhyun. “And you like fishing, don’t you? Isn’t that something we can do together?” He picks up a jar of sparkling green rubber worm lures and holds it up. “Do we use these for lake fishing?” 

Taeyong gazes at the worms. He knows the answer - no, they are too big - but he feels like his voice has dissolved into sea foam, a puff of nothing, and it seems so hard to formulate words.

Baekhyun puts the jar of worms back on the shelf. “What is wrong with you, Taeyong? Why won’t you talk to me anymore?”

“I talk to you,” Taeyong says, with effort. “I’m talking to you right now.”

“Don’t play dumb, Taeyong,” Baekhyun says, his voice rising.

“We’re in a shop. Don’t shout.”

“Who cares? Do we know these people? I’m worried about you!”

“I’m fine,” Taeyong says, but he knows it isn’t true. Many things have been wrong lately. He has trouble concentrating, and his bedsheets seem to scratch his skin when he pulls them up at night. The people he passes in the street all look like they’ve contracted a disease; they look slow, squint-eyed, their skin the colour of dishwater.

“Then why are you like this?” Baekhyun asks.

Taeyong shivers. “I don’t think I’ve been feeling well.”

“Well, why won’t you say so?” Baekhyun says, crying now, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “You can’t just ignore it if you’re sick, Taeyong, and you’re scaring me. I want you to see one of the doctors at the hospital.”

A doctor will not be able to do anything, Taeyong thinks. A doctor could not even begin to understand. 

“Okay,” he says.

He looks down at the jars of sparkling rubber worms, thinks of the creatures of his dreams, the glimmers of phosphorescent life that are teeming through deep waters somewhere every minute of the day, unseen, even now. He thinks of the glimmer of a silver tail, of skin like mother-of-pearl.

“Promise me you will,” Baekhyun says, holding both Taeyong’s hands in his own, gripping tight like he’s afraid Taeyong will just drift away.

Taeyong squeezes his eyes shut. What is Baekhyun asking him to promise? He has forgotten. When he opens his eyes again, Baekhyun is staring at him, eyes rimmed red, biting his lower lip with unhappiness.

“Yes, I will, I promise,” he says, and Baekhyun sniffs and presses his warm, wet face against Taeyong’s shoulder.

~~~~~

The doctor Baekhyun sends him to prescribes antidepressants, and tells Baekhyun to keep Taeyong off the boats for a while. So the _Odd Eye_ sails without him, and Taeyong sits at the end of the dock, hugging his knees, and watches it go, long after it has become nothing more than a dot on the hazy horizon and disappeared.

The antidepressants give the world a different sort of unreality, where everything is excessively bright. He finds he cannot stop talking, like he’s making up for weeks upon weeks of near-silence. Taeyong has never been a particularly talkative person, and this sudden loquacious tendency scares him so much that he starts to avoid people as much as he can. For the next three weeks he spends most of his waking hours walking further and further along the coast and returns home every night exhausted. Baekhyun pulls him into bed and makes love to him desperately, and as soon as they’re finished, Taeyong is asleep. His dreams are more vivid than ever, and their images spill over into his waking hours. 

When the _Odd Eye_ comes back into port with another full hold, he tells Baekhyun he has to go on the next trip no matter what.

Baekhyun argues with him, pleads with him, cries, and finally refuses to drive him to the dock when the departure day arrives. Taeyong is so close to being back at sea that he’s twitchy and restless, but he forces himself to stay in bed with Baekhyun until the last possible moment; to hold him, to wipe the tears off his face and tell him that he loves him, that he will be back soon. He calls a taxi, boards the ship with his salt-stained canvas backpack slung over one shoulder, and begins helping with the final preparations for castoff. As the _Odd Eye_ is pulling away from the dock, he catches sight of Baekhyun on the pier, half-hidden behind one of the pilings, trying not to let him see him.

~~~~~

There’s heavy rain when they get to the fishing ground, and the possibility of a storm, so they don’t let out the nets right away. The crew spend their time huddled in the cabins playing cards, but their spirits are high. They’re certain another hold full of fish awaits them as soon as the weather abates. Taeyong sits on his bunk amidst the chatter and curling smoke and tries not to twitch at every burst of laughter. Eventually he puts on his wet weather gear and goes out on deck, instantly feeling much calmer. A moment later, Mark Lee is standing beside him, holding tight to the rail and looking as though he might vomit.

“Get back below,” Taeyong tells him. “You’ll get soaked.”

“I saw him,” says Mark.

Taeyong tries his best not to let his expression change, to tell himself he’s jumping to conclusions. He says nothing.

“All those nights you came in late, I wondered what you were up to,” Mark says. “I followed you, once, but you were just standing, looking at the water. So on the last trip I went up there every night and stood in your place, trying to see what you saw. There was nothing and I thought, maybe he just likes looking at the ocean. But then I saw him. He was swimming with that _thing._ ”

“What thing?” asks Taeyong.

Mark licks his lips nervously. “I wondered whether you’d seen it. You haven’t?”

Taeyong looks away. The clouded sky has made the sea truly dark. He can hear the patter of raindrops against the waves forming a sweet, clear slick of fresh water on the ocean’s surface. Mark is still talking. “It was a tiger shark, I think. Five metres long and swimming past the side of the ship, and the - I don’t know the Korean word - the mermaid was right behind it.”

“In-eo,” Taeyong says vaguely, trying to picture it, to cast the image onto the black waves below them, the pure white-and-silver body of Chittaphon pursuing the shark.

“Was he hunting it?” he asks.

“No way. He couldn’t. It could destroy him in one bite if it wanted to. I don’t think it even knew the _in-eo_ was there.” Mark is soaked to the skin by now, hair sleek against his skull, rain dripping from his chin and nose. “You never told anyone, did you? I mean, of course you didn’t. Who would even believe us?”

Taeyong shakes his head. He doesn’t understand Mark’s enthusiasm, yet he sees that Mark takes naturally to the _in-eo,_ to the intrusion of such implausibility into his life. That he had, in fact, been waiting for just such a thing to happen to him, and so its coming to pass cannot harm him.

“Tell me something about him,” Mark says. “You must know something, you’ve known about him for months. Does he talk to you?”

Taeyong stares at him, wordless.

“I want to touch him,” says Mark.

~~~~~

Taeyong avoids Mark after that, as much as it’s possible to avoid someone within the confines of a ship. The thought of the shark troubles Taeyong, but he cannot express himself to Mark, cannot discuss such things with the ease the young Canadian seems able to. He spends every night pacing the deck. Mercifully, Mark doesn’t have Taeyong’s capacity for sleep deprivation, and after working a sixteen-hour day of physical labour he’s often too tired to last the night. When Taeyong finally sees the _in-eo_ and the shark, he’s alone.

The shark is cutting through the very top of the water, its dorsal fin exposed. Mark was right, it is a tiger shark, one of the most aggressive and dangerous types of shark. Chittaphon holds on to the fin, pressing his body against the shark’s side. Taeyong watches, horrified. And then he begins to yell at him, to scream like a madman, waving his arms to get his attention. Finally Chittaphon glances up and sees him, but as quickly as his eyes register him, he looks away again. Taeyong watches Chittaphon and the shark trace the edge of the ship, and Chittaphon’s expression is one of pure delight. Taeyong stands at the rail, watching them, until the shark dives underwater and Chittaphon follows. 

In the morning, the crew of the _Odd Eye_ haul up the nets, and the net drums creak in the way they’re all familiar with. The crew stand around, grinning, shifting on their feet with anticipation, thinking that by the end of the day they’ll have moved millions of won’s worth of fish into the hold. But when the nets are up and the fish spill onto the deck, everyone stands still and quiet. There are no tuna, or saury, or plaice. The fish they have caught are lemon yellow, magenta, electric blue. They’re striped and spotted, fish the crew have never seen before outside of photographs, fish that have no business being in the East China Sea. They cover the deck like a brightly coloured quilt, and the sound of their bodies slapping against the deck fills the crew’s silence. Too many fish is something they can rejoice in. They can ignore the fact that it makes no sense, can believe that God has created a special fountain of fish off the coast of South Korea just for them. But this is unnatural. The rainbow fish are unsettling, aberrant between the grey sea and sky. Jongin nudges one with his toe, a two-foot long yellow fish that has a blue crest and a blue ring around its eye and little puckered lips that make it look like it wants a kiss. The fish’s gills flare half-heartedly, and Jongin bends down and grabs it and flings it over the rail.

“What do we do?” says Taemin.

“Help me,” says Jongin, and he picks up another fish and throws it back.

They work at it all day. Most of the fish are dead by the time they get back in the water; they litter the sea around the _Odd Eye_ like confetti. Taeyong works along with the rest of the crew, although less frantically. He keeps thinking about Chittaphon and the shark, wondering if he will see him again. He thinks at first that he doesn’t dare go back into the water, knowing that the shark might be close behind, but then he realises that he will go anyway, that he will brave the shark the same way he had braved the cold, and all for a creature who finds him nothing more than a curious diversion. Because Chittaphon is still as beguiling as he has been all these months, even if Taeyong means nothing to him.

Every night the fishermen set the nets out, and every morning they bring in another net full of strange fish. They don’t bring them on board any more, but simply lower the net again, dumping them back into the ocean. The crew begin to tell Taemin that the place has become cursed, that they should turn back, but the captain cannot settle with the idea of returning to Busan empty-handed. So they keep at it, and two weeks pass without a single fish being put into the hold.

Taeyong watches for Chittaphon every night, but he does not see him. He knows the _in-eo_ has brought the fish, although he can’t say how he knows. He wonders where Chittaphon is, what he is doing. After seven days and six nights of watching, Taeyong finally collapses onto his bunk and falls into a pit of exhaustion so deep it is more unconsciousness than sleep.

When he wakes, the bunkroom is empty. He dresses quickly and heads for the deck. The sky at the top of the hold is a block of bright cloudless blue that grows as he approaches it. He hears the others laughing and talking, and realises this is a sound he hasn’t heard for days; grim silence has become the usual state of the ship.

On deck the men are gathered around Mark Lee, slapping him on the back while Mark grins idiotically. Taeyong steps further onto the deck and sees the tiger shark. It is hanging by its tail, jaw open, teeth displayed in rows. They’ve measured it; it’s not five metres, it’s six. Even dead it is terrifying. Taeyong walks up to it, past Mark and the others, and Mark sobers as soon as he sees Taeyong and turns to watch him. Taeyong reaches into the shark’s mouth, thinking that his entire torso would fit into that maw, and touches one of the teeth, pressing down until the tip of it punctures his fingertip. A drop of bright red blood appears, and it glows with colour that the rest of the world lacks. 

Mark is standing behind him now, nervous and shifting. 

“It would have killed him,” Mark says. “I had to get rid of it. I threw some bait in the water and I got it with the harpoon gun. You should have seen it fight. I shot it right through the skull and it still kept going. I thought it was never going to die. I was scared stiff, even from up here.”

Taeyong nods. He turns to the rail and looks down at the water. There is no sign of Chittaphon, but Taeyong knows he is there. Waves smack against the side of the boat, and Taeyong thinks he can feel their vibration in his hands, and with them, he hears another sound, deep and melodious and utterly enchanting. He leans over the rail, and leans further, and then he is falling, toppling over the rail and down into the water far below.

He is surrounded by the green of the seawater, and the water is full of a song that makes him feel as though he could start crying and never stop, as though his blood is turning to brine, as though the whole world is nothing but shades of grey. Chittaphon is singing, and Taeyong knows from the song that he has seen the shark’s body, and that he is grieving, and that he will not come back. Chittaphon is going, but for the moment, the ocean, the salt water that fills Taeyong’s mouth, the rush and swell of the waves, all of it is real, all of it is as vibrant and painful as anything he has ever known. The song twists through him, and the last tenuous line that moors him to what had been his life gives way. He is laid open, filled to overflowing. 

Then there is a splash beside him, and a strong arm around his waist, and he is pulled, limp and choking and face wet with saltwater and tears, from the ocean.


End file.
